A. Field of Invention
This invention pertains to the art of methods and apparatuses for locating and purchasing replacement parts, including replacement parts for health care related equipment.
B. Description of the Related Art
Hospitals, health care facilities, clinics, and other similar health care service centers have access to a wide variety of medical equipment used for diagnosing and treating patients. Such equipment may include heart rate monitors, ultrasound machines, magnetic resonance imaging machines, CT-scanners, electronic thermometers, x-ray machines, mammography machines, incubators, and the like, as well as laboratory equipment, such as spectrometers, microscopes, centrifuges, and the like. Even the smallest clinic will have several pieces of equipment from several different manufacturers. This equipment typically requires periodic maintenance, including the replenishment of consumables and the replacement of worn or broken parts. Servicing a wide range of equipment from a wide range of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, can be a complicated and expensive process.
In many cases, machines give no warning of a breakdown and, therefore, the associated personnel have no spare parts on hand to make the repair. Thus, under significant time constraints to make the machine operable, someone from the facility must quickly locate and secure a replacement part. Often this entails contacting the manufacturer or distributor from whom the machine was purchased. While it is likely that the manufacturer or distributor will be able to provide the necessary part, it is probable that the facility will pay premium pricing for the part under those circumstances. The facility may accept this premium pricing due to the urgency of its need, the lack of alternative contacts, concerns about the quality of parts from other sources, and/or the unwillingness to investigate other options. In some instances, the manufacturer or distributor may simply not have the part readily available for shipping or may no longer service the machine, particularly if the machine is an older model. In this case, the facility would have to investigate alternative suppliers for the part, which may take substantial time, and, may result in the selection of an alternative supplier that has poor quality service, parts, or pricing. Permitting the machine to remain inoperable for extended periods of time is usually not an option.
In the end, facilities may incur substantially higher maintenance costs due to a lack of competitive pricing and confidence in alternative suppliers. Medical facilities are under increasing pressure to control rising healthcare costs. If facilities had access to multiple vendors for a particular part, and could facilitate competitive pricing between the vendors, facilities might be able to reduce their maintenance costs. However, locating multiple parts vendors for each machine at a facility is extremely difficult and merely identifying a plurality of vendors and selecting the lowest cost option available may not be the best solution for a facility. Unless the facility has a developed relationship with the various vendors, it will be unable to know whether the vendors are equal, namely whether they provide equivalently high quality parts that are readily available, are shipped in a timely manner, and are supported with good customer service. Moreover, amongst various vendors, parts and associated warranties may not be equivalent. One vendor may sell original parts, another may sell replacement parts, another may sell refurbished parts, and another may sell used parts. All of this variation may create insecurity on the part of the facility to use any vendor other than the manufacturer or distributor. However, if the facility had access to some form of this vendor data, even be it historical data, it could make a better decision on which vendor to use; being able to weigh the benefits and risks associated with each vendor, based on past transactions, in predicting the best part to purchase under the circumstances. Thus, an informed facility might elect to purchase a used part from a one vendor known for having good service and quality used parts rather than a new part from a different vendor having poor customer service and a history of untimely shipping.
Finally, even an informed facility can find itself overwhelmed with the number of vendors available to service a particular part. Time may not permit contacting all of the potential vendors to determine whether a particular vendor can service a particular part at a particular moment subject to the particular circumstances facing the facility. Thus, it would be helpful if the list of available vendors could be prioritized according to certain criteria so that the facility could be provided an organized list in which the vendors at the top of the list (an arbitrary, exemplary designation) are predicted, based on measures of past transactions, to more likely be able to satisfy the requirements of the facility at any given time, than the vendors near the bottom of the list. In this way, the facility can increase its chances of finding the vendor offering the best combination of service, price, and availability with the fewest number of attempted vendor contacts.
It would be advantageous, therefore, to provide the healthcare field with access to a large, centralized community of parts vendors that service a wide variety of equipment generally found in medical facilities. It further would be advantageous if relevant contact and transaction performance information concerning the vendors in the community could be maintained in a centralized, searchable database. It would additionally be advantageous if a search of the database of vendors, using a first set of criteria, such as part number or machine manufacturer, would return a list of prospective vendors from the community prioritized based on a predictive measure of which is most likely to be able to provide the part. It would also be advantageous if the list of prospective vendors could be further organized according to an algorithm comprising a second set of criteria, such as vendor quality characteristics, so as to provide a prioritized list of prospective vendors whereby specific vendors can be selected and contacted in a preferential order. It would further be advantageous if data from each vendor transaction could be fed back into the algorithm thereby influencing the prioritization of future prospective vendor lists. The present invention provides such a method.